Chapter One

It wasn’t being shot that was the problem. Or the fact that someone had apparently decided to beat the crap out of me beforehand. Or afterward. Or, considering the way I felt, possibly both.

I wasn’t sure, as I couldn’t seem to remember the fight that had left me bloody and bruised, with a bullet hole in my right thigh and another in my left shoulder. I couldn’t seem to remember much of anything else, either, including who the hell I was. But that still wasn’t the problem.

No, the problem was that I’d woken up next to a vampire.

One who was maddeningly hard to kill.

“If you would but listen to me for a moment,” he said, as I slammed his pretty red head against the concrete floor for the sixth freaking time.

“Okay,” I panted, wondering what the hell his skull was made of. Granite? “Let’s chat.”

Of course, that would be difficult since I’d just changed tactics, grabbing his throat and squeezing for all I was worth.

I wasn’t trying to choke him to death. That doesn’t work with creatures who don’t breathe, and the bastard’s neck was too muscular for me to close my hands around anyway. But most vamps have instincts left over from their human days, and they don’t like being grabbed there. It distracts them, messes up their concentration, makes them panic.

At least, I really hoped it did, since otherwise I was screwed.

He didn’t have fangs in me yet, but he didn’t need them. Because Hollywood had gotten it wrong. Even plain old vamps could leech blood molecules through the skin using a simple touch. As a master, this one could probably do it without even that, just by being in my vicinity, assuming he could concentrate. Which, judging by the bulging eyes, was probably not the case.

But then he got a leg over mine and flipped us.

Okay, then, I thought grimly. It looked like the choking thing wasn’t providing enough of a distraction. Fortunately, he’d left me a hand free.

So I used it to break his nose.

“Damn it!” He actually looked surprised. “Stop fighting me!”

“Sure thing,” I grunted, struggling for a foothold. “I’ll just lie here and let you drain me.”

“I’m not draining you!”

“Then why do I feel like shit?”

He stared down at me, exasperation and what looked weirdly like concern shimmering in liquid blue eyes. “Because you took two bullets in the last hour?”

Oh, yeah.

For a second, dizziness and an odd sense of familiarity combined to mess with my head. I stared up at the stranger, trying to place him. It should have been easy; he wasn’t exactly the sort of guy you forgot.

The hair was actually more auburn than red, and there was an absurd amount of it for a man, flowing over his shoulders and my hands. It should have made him look girlie, but somehow it didn’t. Maybe because it framed a strong, aristocratic face—high cheekbones, sensuous lips, hard jawline—that managed to be arresting even covered in blood from the broken nose. A nose that was already twitching back into place, like the smear of red was sinking back into the pale perfection of his skin, leaving him looking as if he’d never been injured at all and—

Damn it!

This is how they operate, I told myself harshly. They drain you until your brain doesn’t work so well, then turn on the innocence or beauty or charm, confusing the hell out of you until you black out and they finish the job. Only that so wasn’t happening this time.

Of course, that would be a lot easier to manage if I had a stake. Or a knife. Or anything remotely weapon-like, because hand-to-hand against this bastard was starting to look like a gesture in—

I paused, noticing the shackle dangling off my right wrist.

Oh, goodie.

“I’m trying to help you,” he rasped, somehow getting a hand under the chain before it decapitated him.

“Sure you are.” I grunted, really putting my back into it. “Next you’ll be telling me you’re my boyfriend, come to get me out of this.”

He burst out laughing, since clearly he was off his head.

Or maybe that was me, because now I was hearing voices.

“Status.” The word rang in my ear as clearly as if someone were looking over my shoulder. My head whipped around, but the only occupants of the iron-barred cage I’d woken up in were me, the vamp and a desiccated rat.

“I have…ugh…located her.”

“Estimated extraction time?”

“That is…still being determined.”

“There is a problem?”

The vamp’s hand flailed out and grabbed one of the cage bars. I smashed my foot—the one in the steel-toed Cat—down on it. He cursed and let go. “Yes, well…a few.”

“Show me.”

And suddenly things went from weird to super-ultra-weird as a picture flashed through my head as vivid as a movie. It was upside down and jiggling, but the best I could tell it showed some chick wearing a blood-splattered tank and a crazed expression. Her short dark hair was spiky with sweat, her face was livid with bruises and her weird golden eyes were slitted with effort as she—

Oh. I guessed that was me.

Wow, I look like shit, I thought, right before I noticed something else. I looped the slack of the chain around the bar behind me for leverage and—

Oh, yeah. That worked better.

“What the hell is she doing?” That was someone new, a crabby voice with an English accent.

“With respect, Lord Marlowe,” the vamp snapped, “what does it look like?”

“And she is trying to remove your head because…?”

“She doesn’t recognize me. I believe drugs may have been involved. She—”

“Drugs have no effect on dhampirs.”

“I will be sure to tell her that, my lord. As soon as my vocal cords knit back together!”

“What about Lawrence?” That was the first voice again.

“I found him at the dock. He is dead.”

“You are sure? He’s first level—”

“Quite sure.” The vamp’s mental voice was dry. I got another flash—this time of a vampire, or what was left of one, the pieces arranged almost artistically on a patch of bloody concrete—and then it was gone.

Someone cursed. Maybe one of them, maybe me. I couldn’t tell anymore. The longer they talked, the more my head ached. By now waves of pain were stabbing my brain with every word, like needles through the eye.

“Where are you?” the voice asked. “We were tracking you, but lost the signal—”

“Because they took her into one of their labs.”

And suddenly I was in freaky visual number three, running through what looked like a time-lapse film of a city at night. For a couple of seconds, my brain took me on a crazy ride over mangled fences, under trash-strewn bridges and through a maze of alleyways that zipped by so fast, all the graffiti streamed together into one long, obscene snarl. It ended in what looked like a warehouse out of some dystopian nightmare, except even postapocalyptic ruins don’t usually feature a bright orange hell-mouth swirling away in the middle of a wall.

“What is that?” the English guy demanded.

“The other problem,” the vamp rasped as the cage blinked into view again.

The transition left me dizzy and nauseous, and royally pissed off. Whatever kind of trick this was, it wasn’t going to work. I growled and got serious.

“That is why we have had difficulty finding their test sites,” voice number one said. “They’ve begun hiding them outside our world.”

“Yes,” the vamp strangled out. “It would appear that the Black Circle…is somewhat more inventive…than we had thought.”

“Are they folding space?” the English guy asked. “Or did you actually pass through to another—”

“Do you know, my lord, somehow I haven’t had time to look!”

“Don’t take that tone with me when we’re trying to—”

“We will have operatives at your location in ten minutes,” voice number one cut in smoothly. “Attempt to contain the situation until then.”

“Under…stood.”

Great. The guy was like freaking Teflon; every time I thought I had a grip, he slithered out of it. He should have been dead a couple times over by now, but he didn’t even seem to be getting tired, while I was panting like a steam engine and sweating like a pig. And now he was about to have backup?

Of course, that might not matter, since I was going to be dead from an aneurysm soon if they didn’t shut the hell up.

“And Louis-Cesare—be careful.” That was voice number one again, sounding grim. “I can control her fits, but not until she reenters our world. And the fact that she does not recognize you is a bad sign—”

“Oh, do you really think so?”

“Listen to me! The two halves of her nature do not communicate. Therefore the fact that she does not know you may indicate that her vampire nature is perilously close to assuming control—”

“Yes, I have seen it before. I can handle—”

“You have not seen it before! You have seen it nearer the surface, perhaps, but still partly diluted by her human side, which tends to be—”

“Lord Mircea—”

“—dominant mentally. But when she perceives herself in mortal danger, her vampire half—”

“Lord Mircea!” The vamp had somehow managed to croak that out loud, but it didn’t help. The needle was an ice pick now, jabbing merrily around the inside of my skull. I made a sound between a snarl and a mewl, and smashed the vamp’s head into the floor again.

It didn’t help, either.

“—can assume full control and it is physically far stronger. It is also ruthless, cunning and five hundred years old. You must not—”

“What I must, my lord, is be able to concentrate!”

“Listen to him, you arrogant fool!” the English guy broke in. “He’s trying to tell you that nobody knows what a dhampir that old can do because they’re always put down before then! But if you’re not careful, you’re going to find out the hard—”